Back to normal after the UK election

Personal message

Sorry I've been absent from blogging for a while. As some of you will know I stood (unsuccessfully) in the UK election. My hope was to get close to the UK government as an MP to help with next year's UNFCCC in Glasgow. Prior to the election and this year's COP it was already looking like a very challenging conference.
What was perhaps hopefully was that the climate emergency was part of the political discourse and one of the leader's debates was on the issue ...though unfortunately not attended by the head of the party who won the election.

The constituency I was standing in was Mid-Derbyshire and it was hit badly by the floods... It turns out that the UK has built over 40% of the new houses since the Second World War on flood planes.....  this will require some new thinking and a considerable increase in funding for the UK's environment agency.

Building resilience is increasingly part of what every community will need to do and planning will need to take into consideration the new realities we are experiencing on the ground.

If you are visiting the UK I can strongly recommend visiting parts of the constituency such as Belper and Darley Abbey.

As the Madrid COP has shown we do not yet have the leadership to push key governments to commit to the higher targets required to address the climate emergency. Some of that must now come from the UK government as host of 2020 COP. But we also need to see the delivery of the funding that was promised in Paris of $20 billion a year to help countries build their own resilience and move away from fossil fuels.

Without the key leadership from national governments local and regional governments must take up some of that leadership role AND industry needs to as well. The US coalition 'We are Still In' is showing the way. They are trying to deliver the US target without support from the national government. More coalitions such as this will be needed in the future.

Our national leaders in so many countries are the wrong ones to address the challenges we face so lets get on with it and show the way.